Skeletonized leaves litter the grass around my house this hot Kentucky summer. Many still cling to branches. One floated on the surface of the water, and I watched it. The structure without substance, pressed between the sky and the pond. My reflection through its fenestrations is a stained glass abstraction: flechatellerite flashed with scarlet recognition. These are difficult days.

The fan above my bed has a property I can’t comprehend. Late at night, lit only by the sideways moonlight from my bedroom window, my ceiling fan casts a shadow on the ceiling, right next to it. The shadow of the fan spins slightly faster than the fan itself. I’ve laid awake for hours measuring the distinction, seeing it without being able to hold it in my mind.

during my drive home from
work
the sky, dangling its clouds
and birds, is a blue brightness,
a shallow color, a tint
expressing the delicate resiliency
of everyedgewhere the void pulls at,
against gravity history and sense.